What went wrong with Doctor Who?
Overcomplicated and expensive, Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who reboot no longer works for today’s television landscape, says Will Cooling
These are difficult times for Doctor Who, with the show celebrating the 20th anniversary of its triumphant return to British screens with some of the worst viewing figures in the programme’s long history.
What makes this underperformance so frustrating is that upon his return as showrunner, Russell T Davies has addressed the issues that plagued the show during Jodie Whittaker’s tenure as The Doctor. Not only did he reverse his predecessor’s decision to abandon the Saturday night and Christmas day timeslots, but Davies sought to bring some rizz back to the programme by casting young actors with plenty of energy and sex appeal. A stark contrast to Chris Chibnall who – clearly uncomfortable about the implications of casting the first female Doctor – sought to dress her like the target audience’s mother, always travel with a man old enough to be her dad, and would never capitalise on the natural chemistry between The Thirteenth Doctor and her female companion Yaz.
Likewise, the self-serious tone is gone, with Davies bringing back the dynamic camerawork, colourful sets and bombastic music that had made his and Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who stand apart from other shows. And yet, today’s series is barely getting half the viewership Chibnall’s last full season secured. That’s true whether you look at just the overnights or include on-demand viewing through digital recordings or Iplayer.
A conservative approach
A surprising problem is that Davies has actually proven to be quite conservative in his approach upon returning as showrunner, whereas back in 2005 he overhauled the programme’s format to ensure it made sense in a television landscape that had changed significantly since 1989. He increased the running time, moved away from serialisation to a series of standalone stories with the occasional two-parter and a loose season-long narrative, and tried to better flesh out the human characters who interacted with The Doctor. Alas there’s been no such reimagining of the show to take into account the changes that have occurred since 2005.
For example the show is still aiming to be 45 minutes long, a running time clearly originally picked so that adverts could be inserted when it was sold to other broadcasters. But Doctor Who is no longer being syndicated in this way. The move away from serialisation was clearly inspired by the need to ensure that casual fans could miss an episode here and there, but still follow next week’s episode. But today they can catch-up on episodes they miss whenever they want. Worse, the cost of securing new sets, new actors, and new monsters every week has made the show impossible for the BBC to fund by itself, while the pressure it places on actor playing The Doctor has led to numerous accidents and injuries.
It’s a brutal format which leads Doctor Who to be underwritten compared to many of the best shows on television today
And it’s with characterisation that the format is most showing its age. The Russell T Davies version of Doctor Who usually demands that the writer introduce a complex sci-fi setting, establish a fresh cast of allies and villains, and resolve the whole situation within 45 minutes. It’s a brutal format which leads Doctor Who to be underwritten compared to many of the best shows on television today. Look at The Robot Revolution – it had enough twists and turns to justify a multi-part serial, which would have given time for minor characters to be introduced properly, and for more of the story to be shown to us rather than frenetically told in passing by a Doctor busily multi-tasking. And that fast pace and varied settings makes the show exhausting to watch on streaming services, which is increasingly meant to be the show’s home, both in Britain and overseas. Surely moving towards serials that spread a more complex, considered storyline over several hours would better suit today’s audiences, and allow the show to try new things.
The elephant in the room has long been whether a cost-cutting Disney will want to renew an expensive third-party show that doesn’t seem to have broken through stateside. But regardless whether Disney+ decides to renew the series overseas, the disappointing British viewing figures shows that the BBC needs to seriously think about how to create a show that makes sense for today’s audience. They’ve tried partying like it’s the year 2005, it’s now time for something different.
Will Cooling writes about politics and pop culture at It Could be Said Substack